Abstract
Despite the high prevalence of depression and other mental illnesses in autistic adults, screening instruments such as the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) have not been specifically validated in an autistic sample. Using data from two Autism CRC longitudinal studies (n = 581), confirmatory factor analysis supported the two-factor model (somatic and cognitive/affective) in the autistic sample and one-factor model in the community comparison sample. Confirmatory bifactor analysis also supported use of the PHQ-9 total score in autism. Good convergent validity was found with two measures of psychological well-being for PHQ-9 total and subdomain scores. The PHQ-9 is a useful tool for autism research allowing comparison across autistic and non-autistic participants.
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation and participation of all participants on the autism spectrum and their carers involved in this study.
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This work was supported by the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC), established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program.
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SRCA conceived the study and conducted data analysis with LPL. SRCA, LPL, MU, YIH, ALR, JNT contributed to planning, design of the study, data analysis, and writing.
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Arnold, S.R.C., Uljarević, M., Hwang, Y.I. et al. Brief Report: Psychometric Properties of the Patient Health Questionaire-9 (PHQ-9) in Autistic Adults. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 2217–2225 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03947-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03947-9